Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (13 page)

In the distance, hovering over the shifting reflections on the massive rippling surface, lurk the foggy shapes of islands and foothills. The way the blue sky mimics the blue of the water and how they change colors within themselves and offer different breeds of light, one steady and bright, the other erratic and patterned, seems so... normal. The ocean just went on working without humans. Like an amiable giant.

“You should see your faces,” Peregrine says in a high whisper, chuckling. “Isn’t it awesome? I’ve always loved coming to the coast. My folks used to have waterfront property on the other side of the bay. I think everyone should live near water.”

The other humans aren’t as taken by the ocean and have taken this moment to sit on the concrete barriers on the road, busying themselves with patting rocks out of their shoes or stretching.

Jules says, “Well, you got me. Much cooler than a big blue wet thing.”

Ashton’s too busy to comment, he’s writing in his journal like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

“Alright,” Alessandra says, cracking her knuckles. “The ocean isn’t going anywhere, we can come back and say hello later. Let’s go.”

“Bye, ocean,” Jules says, playing along.

I wait for Ashton to finish his writing spree before following the others. Judging by his permanent half-smile and slight bounce in his step, I’d say our detour was well worth it. He must have jotted down some good thoughts.

“Okay,” Peregrine says, leaning back and stretching her arms over her head. “Favorite animal. Go.”

“God, we’re really desperate now,” James says. There’s almost a laugh in his voice, but he restrains it.

“Come on, everyone’s got a favorite animal,” Peregrine says. “Didn’t your parents ever take you to the zoo? You know. Lions. Giraffes. Whatever.”

Vinder mock-shudders. “Imagine what zoos are like
now
.”

“I can smell it already,” Peregrine says, laughing.

“My favorite animal is anything I can catch,” Vinder says, smiling at his own joke.

“Practical. I like it. You’re a true child of the times, Vin. What about you guys?” She turns around and walks backwards for a while, smiling at us. “Favorite animal. C’mon.” If Peregrine was ever afraid of us or apprehensive about talking to us, she sure isn’t showing it now.

I can count the number of animals I know of on one hand, but James interrupts. “Don’t waste your time, Peregrine.” Spoken as if we weren’t there at all.

I can feel myself and the others prickle slightly. Go on, James, say something else. Give me a reason. Alessandra glances over uneasily.

Peregrine looks at James sternly. “Rude.”

He just sniffs and decides the conversation isn’t worth his time anymore. I want to beat the scowl right off his face.

I can’t imagine what the other humans would do if I just decked him in the face out of nowhere. But damn, would it feel
good
. Ashton, Jules, and I usually took out our pent up energy and anger by sparring, but that doesn’t seem entirely appropriate given the current company.

I try not to groan when I realize we’re headed deeper into the downtown area. It starts just like the one back home— from houses, to factories, to warehouses, to buildings that get taller and taller towards the middle, like hackles on a dog.

Punk rushes up behind me and makes me jump. He pants and bounds between us, happy as ever. He just appears and disappears without warning. Wish he’d just get lost already.

Night falls and our fire is almost half smoke. Mental note: never use pine needles again. But it was the only kindling in this stupid fenced-off field. I guess it used to be a fancy school house, all brick with a pointed roof and a stopped clock. We situated our fire under a curve of chain link fence in the corner.

Everyone eats quietly until James, of all people, clears his throat. His every motion seems like he’s hiding something, like everything he does in an act. There’s a twinge of fearlessness in his eyes.

“So,” he says, gesturing with an open hand. “We have a fire breather, a sharpshooter, a sprinter, and...?” He looks at Jules.

“Yes?” she says, mock-interested.

“What do
you
do?” He says it like we’re some stupid superhero characters from comic books. So much for the ‘don’t waste your time’ thing. I guess if it’s
his
idea, not anyone else’s, it’s okay to interrogate us.

Jules doesn’t reply, only sets her food down and stands up. She steps around us and kneels in front of James, who doesn’t seem to like where the situation is going. A coy smile grows on her face, and I know what she’s going to do. Just... not specifically.

Jules looks James in the face with a brand of confidence unique to her. She takes off one of her gloves and gently traces the outline of his jaw. The surprisingly intimate gesture draws everyone’s attention like a magnet.

No one, however, looks as surprised as James. He turns red in the face, scrambles to his feet, abandons his meal, and says, “Need more firewood.” He moves into the darkness towards the school house before any of us can say anything.

We all look at Jules as she sits down and picks her food up as if nothing happened. I don’t think anyone has the guts to ask her what she did. Alessandra smiles briefly, then returns to her food.

The morning arrives unwelcomed and we break camp. Jules walks over to kick around the ashes from the fire, and James, gathering the food garbage, abandons his unfinished task and walks across the clearing to roll up beds. He shoots a wary look over his shoulder at her. Whatever she did, she made an impression.

“So what did you do?” Peregrine asks her in a hushed voice, grinning, as if sharing a secret joke.

Jules only laughs.

9
• thousand-yard stare

[Dev]

The rain may have been heavy before, but at least it wasn’t
this
. It blows at us sideways, whipping our clothes around as we pause. The skyscrapers push the wind faster along the city corridors. Alessandra hears me sigh and says, “Sorry, we have to cut through the middle. Cities are where the virus hit the hardest. People didn’t even have a chance to stockpile supplies and flee for less crowded areas.”

“So, what, does that mean the pickings are good, or bad?” Peregrine laughs.

“Probably bad,” Vinder says. “We’re not the only ones out here looking for stuff.”

“Still. I think it’s worth checking. And we could use some refueling, anyway,” Alessandra says, her voice trailing off, which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

“Cities are full of two things,” Peregrine says, counting on her fingers. “One: a ton of supplies. Two: corpses.”

“Oh,
yay
,” Jules mutters, folding her arms.

“Better corpses than the alternative,” James adds under his breath. “Dead people don’t
shoot
.” He almost takes the words out of my head. It’s stupid of me to think that’s like a breach of privacy, but agreeing with him is like brushing fur the wrong way.

We crest the highway ramp and it eventually descends into the city. It looks like any other. Shop signs rusted and covered in moss hang limply from concrete fronts. Bent light posts with shattered faces tower over the grassy roads and hanging moss waves like tattered flags. This area must have gotten more rain than ours. Of course.

In another life, in another timeline, where we weren’t forced to take shelter from humans back at our city, we could have made it to places like this a long time ago. Resentment blooms hot in my chest despite the chilly air.

But this city seems to have had a more violent past than the one back home. We come to a stop by a giant metal collage of plates and wire and other scraps— piled vertically to form a barrier. At its base, cars lay turned on their sides. Metal shrapnel bent together laces the top of the makeshift wall like thorns.

Punk pads up to the wall and sniffs it as if it would come to life at any second. The hair on his back stands up straight.

“What is it?” Vinder asks, approaching the metal behemoth carefully.

“Military checkpoint?” Peregrine offers.

James shakes his head and reaches for his pocket. “No. This isn’t a checkpoint. There’s no gate.”

Alessandra, eyebrows knit in concentration, suddenly lights up. “Others.” Everyone looks at her and she says again, “Other survivors. They could be anywhere—”

“I don’t hear anything,” Ashton says. “Just us.”

Alessandra glances at Ashton like she doesn’t believe him, but pauses. “Fine, but let’s keep moving.”

She leads us away from the wall and Vinder says under his breath, “Supplies and corpses.”

The mist gradually increases to a steady soaking rain thick enough to turn black shadows grey. I pass around a car with a sapling growing out of the sunroof.

After an hour or two of steady, creeping walking, Alessandra breaks the silence. “You’ll be our first line of defense, Ashton.”

“Hm? Yeah. Of course.” He moves his eyes to the distance, intense and focused.

But he stops and turns around all of a sudden— but it’s just Punk. He stands at the other end of the block, legs apart and ears pinned back. The hair along his back stands up. Is he... growling...?

“Punk,” Ashton calls. “What’re you doing?”

But Punk stays put.

“Just leave him.”

Punk’s still standing there, being weird, by the time we’re a few blocks away. Ashton finally stops glancing behind him anxiously. Farther down the street are more cars, nearly a pileup. I spot a few military vehicles, too, but I’ve forgotten the names of them over time. I don’t miss them. Their massive tires, textured like claws to rip into earth, pointed towards the sky like the legs of dead spiders. The soaking rain, clouds, and sun work in tandem to give everything a too-bright shine.

“You okay?” Ashton asks me.

“Yeah, s’just bright.”

“It’s nice to actually feel rain for once, though,” he says, smiling a little. “It’s different.”

“Yup.” But the feeling of clammy wet clothes is getting old fast.

“Stop,” Alessandra says, and everyone freezes instantly. She holds her hand up and the other hovers over a gun holster on her side. She scans the area.

The road we occupy splits in two and curves around in a perfect circle to join again on the other side. A huge, rusted statue stands in the middle of the circle. A car had crashed into it some time ago and left it bent and hunched over, no telling what it used to be. Across the two skyscrapers past the circle dangle long wires and signs, but I can’t make out the writing because of the glare. Wish the sun would set already.

“What is it?” Peregrine whispers.

“We’ve been skirting their territory all this time,” Alessandra says mostly to herself. “Dammit. It’s the front gate.”

“Front gate of what?” James snaps. He’s already got his rifle out.

“You know how I said there’d be lots of supplies unless survivors had been through...?”

“Yes....”

“Well. I guess they never left.”

Ashton jumps like he got a small electric shock. “Voices,” he says, and pauses to listen. He shuts his eyes and says, “Guns.”

“We need to leave,” Peregrine says, grabbing her pistol.

“Scatter!” Alessandra shouts, and everyone bolts.

A shot breaks through the sound of rain and leaves my ears ringing. That was close. Someone behind me swears and fires a few shots of their own, mirrored by a different gun’s shots. I skid to a halt and throw myself behind a truck parked at the edge of the alley. Cain’s next to me in a second.

“See him?”

“Fifth floor, brick building. But he’s gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Don’t ask me
why
—”

A scream, down the street. I jump up and look through the windows of the truck. The sun burned off some of the clouds, but still all I make out are silhouettes. Too many of them. I can make out Alessandra, her long hair. And James. The others could be around the corner, or gone, and where did Jules and Ashton go...?

“We gotta go—”

Cain grips my shoulder hard. He stares at me coldly.

“What? Come on!” I know what he’s thinking. They’re humans, why help them? “Yeah, you take care of yourself.” I shake his hand off and jump over the truck. I hit the ground running and have enough time to wind up a punch straight into the jaw of the man attacking Alessandra. His jaw snaps under my knuckles. Alessandra gasps and falls to her knees. For a second, I thought she fainted. But she comes back up with her pistol, reloading the clip.

“Thanks,” she breathes, then fires two shots to our left, taking out the guy that was grappling with James. He reels and crumples to the ground. James steps back and stares at Alessandra. Damn, she’s quick.

“Where’s everyone else?”

She looks around and says, “Don’t know.”

“Get down—” I sidestep in front of Alessandra. Through the now torrential rain and bright sunlight, I can make out three more men striding towards us.

But they’re slipping, falling— I can’t help but grin when I see Ashton’s shape through the curtain of lit-up rain. He crouches low, sweeps a powerful foot under a guy while using the momentum to strike out with an left hook, straight to another guy’s jaw. They’re both down. Ashton stands to his full height, but he staggers backwards— another man has a gun raised. My heart stops.

“Hey!” I bellow, running for the shooter. He hardly has time to turn around, and I can already feel my fuel sacs start to itch. A small voice in the back of my head screams:
What are you doing?!

I exhale and with it comes a massive bloom of fire. It’s too big. I clamp my hand over my mouth shut and slide backwards. The fire doesn’t dissipate like it normally does. It usually runs out of fuel quickly, so if it doesn’t hit anything, it just flares and fades in an instant. But this one lingers. But, the rain... no, it
is
the rain burning. 

And so is the man. He screams on the ground, flailing and trying to pat it out, but the fire grows and burns greedily until the only thing moving is itself. It crawls into a puddle next to the man, burns for a moment, and fizzles.

I glance over at Ashton, staring in disbelief, probably like me. The man is certainly dead. Way more charred than he should have been for a man on fire in a rainstorm.

“Come on, let’s go,” Ashton says, heading back to the circle. But he’s... the man... so blackened and twisted and... did I really do that? I wrench my eyes away from it and I can finally move, back with Ashton and the others.

“There may be more coming,” Alessandra says when we come back. And Jules and Cain are there, too. No sign of Vinder or Peregrine.

“Where’d the others go?” Jules asks, rolling her shoulders. She has blood on her hands.

This gives Alessandra pause and she looks around frantically. “Guys!” She shouts. “Vinder! Peregrine!”

“Sshh, shut up!” James hisses.

“They already know we’re here, who cares?”

“Stop,” Ashton says, and they do. He looks down one street, then down another, and the other: all three streets that lead to the circle not counting the one barricaded by the metal wall. “Humvees.”

“Which way?” Alessandra says.

He looks at her and says, “All of them.”

Cinder blocks and cars block every alley, plywood covers every building entrance. The metal wall bars the only other street.

There’s nowhere to run.

When the Humvees pull up, all screeching sideways to a halt and simultaneously blocking the street, the occupants spring to life. Doors fly open and men kneel with guns trained on us. Tops open up— more guns. The Humvees are alive with humans all scrambling to get a good aim on us. We scoot back to back and can only wait for the bullets to fly.

A few men lower their guns, feeling confident they’ve won, and take a second to stare at me Ashton. Under their breath, one says, “What the....”

Ashton takes a sharp breath next to me and I know exactly why. These humans are going to be exactly like how we thought the last batch was going to be.

“Drop the weapons!” A loudspeaker voice shouts from one of the Humvees.

Alessandra and James’s guns clatter onto the concrete. I never even thought to draw my own handgun. Still, I slide it out of my back pocket and drop it.

“Hands on your head!”

We slowly comply. I grimace. They’re going to take one look at us and decide we’re too dangerous to live. I wonder what it’s like to die from getting shot in the head. Like turning out the lights. My sweat mingles with the steady rain.

“On the ground, go! Knees on the ground!”

“Ugh, you’re kidding,” Ashton mutters, shoulders slumping. “Easy for you to say.”

He lowers himself carefully onto his skinny heels, then unfolds his legs behind him to rest his knees on the ground. An elaborate movement. His anxiety is palpable— he told me once that he hates being grounded and only sits or lies down when he knows he’s safe. It’s not easy to get back onto your feet when your feet are a foot and a half long.

A door to the Humvee slams shut and hard boots stomp their way over. “I said drop the weapons.”

The hair on my neck prickles— he’s talking to Cain, I just know it. Stubborn jerk never lets go of that damn rifle.

“Drop it.” He’s treating him just like a human—he must not have figured it out yet.... Hasn’t noticed his ears....

Cain sure is taking his time. My eyes dart from person to person, waiting for one of them to pull the trigger.

But the sound of a rifle being set carefully on the pavement is all I hear.

“Jules,” Ashton whispers.

“Yeah?”

“They’re going to try and take us.”

“I know.”

What are they talking about? I stay quiet. I try to crane my head around to look at Jules but I won’t risk moving too much.